Read Online Ode to Lata by Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla - Free Book Online Page B

past six years. I hope you feel scared, and I hope you cry and regret.  Yes, regret! Regret that you have been so unappreciative of me. Regret that you never wanted to fuck me. This is your punishment.
    But I started to cry instead. It was I that was starting to feel scared. There, lying in front of me, had been not just Richard but the last six years of my life. Seeing him like that made mortality shockingly believable.
    And I wondered, if Richard never woke up again, what would all those years have been worth? Feeling the way that I still did for him, how could I fathom life without him?
    And all this for what? What had he given me to show for those six years? How, without looking absurd, would I express my grief over someone who had been known to boast of my obsession over him? All this over someone who had not seen fit to give me one day of total commitment, never mind the lifetimes.
    It was then that it started to occur to me that perhaps this was not about Richard at all. My whole relationship with him was suddenly being questioned with a kind of objectivity completely lacking in such turbulent relationships.
    This hospital room, his illness, these were only props for something much more profound evolving in our lives now. Perhaps this is all about me. My lesson at his expense. A chance for a long-sought redemption.
    Maybe after all this was over and Richard had recuperated, he would go back to his same old ways. But not I.  Not anymore.  I would never be able to go back to the way it was. Seeing him there, like that, had invariably changed the course for me.
    This is how I would have normally preferred to have him – ailing from some cold or infection so that no one else would have interfered with my devotion to him. So that he would need me to attend to him. Wouldn’t have the strength to fuck every golden-haired boy in West Hollywood. And I would have driven the 405 and battled traffic from Santa Monica to Carson, laden with a freshly baked peach pie from Polly’s and a tub of vanilla ice cream. So much to look forward to.  Richard all to myself.  Helpless.  Unable to get away.  Needing attention.  Mine, especially.  Mummy’s coming.  Don’t you worry, everything will be alright.  I will simply love the illness away. And maybe in the process my own too.  Snuggle time.  Watch a mushy romantic movie for the third time with him. Something with Julia Roberts in it.  He always made me feel like Julia fucking Roberts when I was around him.  Demure.  Pretty.  Martyred.  I had always wanted him to see this one with me but he had been too busy going out to some new hip club or some private party.  Or fucking.  Fucking someone new.  Someone hot.  Someone with a gym-built body and white fucking alabaster skin and golden fucking hair.  And, oh, let’s not forget the blue or green eyes.  But not tonight.  Tonight he was my Richard.  They would all have to wait while he ailed from fucking too much.
    I remembered the times I had, much to my own horror, secretly wished that he would be struck with something like this.  Something irrevocable. Something that would last longer than a cold or food poisoning. So that in being cast down from the heights I had helped elevate him to, he would have understood my pain and met my vulnerability with his own.  It was only when he was at the lowest points in his life that he needed me in that way.  When he was sweet to me.  When he baby-talked with me and fluttered his long lashes at me and gobbled up all the pie and ice cream and affection.  Well, there he was again in that same way.  And the thought that what I had wished for might have come true filled me with dread.
    You see, this time, although he would wake to need me, I feared that maybe he wouldn’t stay that way.  He would wither in front of my eyes.  The cheeks would sink in and the muscles on his body would disintegrate so that the flesh would hang around his bones like sagging clothes.  Just